Embodiments hereof are directed generally to cable network topography and more specifically to the communication of identifying information by a cable modem termination system (CMTS) to an application server in a cable network.
Cable networks are increasingly providing a wide variety of disparate services to subscribers including, but not limited to, voice over IP (VoIP) services, gaming, sponsored downloads, bandwidth on demand, and other resource intensive services. These and similar services are provided by service-specific application servers that depend on subscriber-specific information and CMTS-specific information to allocate bandwidth, provide billing and assure a quality-of-service (QoS) level to the user.
Typically, a cable data network comprises a subscriber using a cable modem (CM) and a customer premises equipment (CPE) to obtain multimedia services. Packets from the CPE are passed by the CM to the CMTS. Packets that are destined for an application server are routed by the CMTS to the application server. The application server provides the requested service to the subscriber through the CMTS. The application server is responsible for application or session-level state management. The CMTS is responsible for managing a finite pool of network bandwidth and admitting requests against this pool. The application server authenticates and authorizes client requests based on policies established by the service provider. For client requests that pass these checks, the application server determines the particular QoS parameters necessary to deliver the service to the client, based on its knowledge of the requested service, and then requests these resources from the CMTS.
In order for the CMTS and the application server to perform their assigned tasks effectively, the application server must be able to identify the CMTS through which a CPE is communicating and the cable subscriber associated with the CPE. Currently, the application server accesses a datastore associating a CPE with a CMTS. This static relationship requires significant resources to establish and maintain. For example, reassignment of the CPE to a different CMTS, the addition of a subscriber, and the addition of CPE to an existing subscriber require that all datastores supporting application servers be updated with new information.
What would be useful are means for conveying information to an application server identifying the CMTS serving a CPE requesting services from the application server and associating the cable subscriber to the service request.